Weekend Trip, Simon’s Birthday

We just returned this evening from our weekend away. After a 4 3/4 hour trip from Chichicastenango, we arrived back at SEMILLA (“I can’t wait to get back home to the seminary,” some students were saying), had dinner, enjoyed worship together led by a student group, and then celebrated Simon’s 16th birthday with chocolate cake and ice cream.

Today started with students giving Simon flowers and a card and singing “Happy Birthday,” and then also giving Keith a card and flowers for Father’s Day. Simon’s family also had sent down a batch of cards for him to open today. Quite sweet. After breakfast we traveled about two hours to Chichicastenago, a small town that hosts the country’s biggest open air artisan market twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays. Students were divided up into groups and then given money for lunch, and then explored the markets for several hours.

In addition to exploring the markets, many students also went into the Catholic Church. The people of Chichi have combined traditional Mayan religious rites with Catholicism, and we could see these rites being performed around the church of Santo Tomas. Incense, food, drink and ciagrettes are offered to ancestors and to ensure the continued fertility of the earth.

The trip home was arduous, but we were happy to be back to SEMILLA’s comfortable Guatemalan food. During worship, we had a bit of a bubble with a minor earthquake happening while we were singing (didn’t this happen to the early disciples as well?), so we all headed outdoors. Minor earthquakes are rather common in this area, and the seminary’s structures are well-built and reinforced, so we were quite safe. (Last year we had two earthquakes during the two weeks we were here, but they were harmless.) The earthquake measured 5.6, but the epicenter was 67 miles from Guatemalan City. We are all well, so please do not worry. We continued singing outside for another 20 minutes before coming inside for the birthday party.

Yesterday we had a relaxing morning at our lovely hotel overlooking Lake Atitlan, high on a hill in San Juan. Some students went out on the lake in a rubber boat, and others walked into the quiet town to do some shopping. After crossing the lake by boat around noon, we then drove to Quetzaltenango (Xela) and had lunch at a local restaurant. After that we walked to another women’s cooperative, TRAMA, which does weaving and teaches weaving lessons, and then had another evening to explore the town and have dinner in groups of four. Xela is the second most important city in Guatemala, and about 55 percent of the people in that area are indigenous.

We were reminded tonight at our worship session that we are halfway through the SSTT experience. It’s going quite quickly, and group members are becoming close.